Eberron: Soaring Skies of Khorvaire

On the wings of adventure! (Skyship now included!)

Better late than never, again.

Because the Mirrorverse was 20-some-odd sessions with rather sporadic fighting, XP is only being awarded for the combat encounters instead of all of the little RPing quirks. This is mitigated by your huge amounts of swag and the fact that you still ding.

Stat-Enhancing Wondrous ItemsAmulet of health +2 [Claimed by Tevi]Belt of health +4 [Claimed by Blackfist]Cloak of charisma +6 [x2; Claimed by Gwynne and Reine]Cloak of charisma +4 [Claimed by Tevi]Boots of dexterity +6 [Claimed by Guns]Gauntlets of ogre power +2 [Claimed by Blackfist]Gloves of dexterity +4 [x2; Claimed by Mara and Burzam]Gloves of dexterity +2 [slotless; Claimed by Reine]Headband of intellect +4Headband of intellect +2Periapt of wisdom +4

RingsRing of featherfall [Claimed by Guns]Ring of forcewall [Claimed by Burzam]Ring of four windsRing of protection +2 [Claimed by Roach]Ring of the ram (3 charges per day, instead of 50 total) [Claimed by Roach]Ring of the sophisticate [PFSRD; Claimed by Tevi]Scholar’s ring [PFSRD; Claimed by Tevi]

Magical ConsumablesPotion of arcane sightPotion of cure serious wounds [x2] [Claimed by Burzam]Potion of fly [Claimed by Burzam]Potion of false gravityPotion of magic circle against chaosPotion of magic circle against evilPotion of magic circle against goodPotion of magic circle against lawWand of dispel magic [9/10 charges] [Claimed by Burzam]Wand of great thunderclap [9/10 charges]Wand of greater blindsight [10/10 charges] [Claimed by Burzam]Wand of mass resist energy [10/10 charges]Wand of polymorph [10/10 charges]Wand of sound lance [8/10 charges] [Claimed by Burzam]

You can see the way out of the Mirrorverse! You just need to decide how to get there.

You dive into the instruction manual to the demote detonator described to you by mirror!Burzam and mirror!Dr. Flint! And hoo-boy is it immediately evident that mirror!Burzam’s a different creature for yours. His verbosity is second to none, and once his vocabulary has pounded you into submission, it just keeps on trundling over you and running roughshod over your beleaguered reflex to reach for the dictionary. Mirror!Dr. Flint’s annotations don’t much help either, as his putting things into laymen’s terms is foiled by his utter lack of understanding of the material he’s translating.

From what you can make out of the jargon and “helpful hints fer understandin’,” the remote detonator of the Hand of Wrath is essentially a magical battery attached to an interface with which to connect to Dulum: Once connected, a confirmation signal is activated – via a big red button — that initiates the Hand of Wrath’s self-destruct protocols. As part of those protocols, the Moonbreaker cycles through a firing cycle aimed at the source of the confirmation signal, whose coordinates are uploaded at the time of the confirmation of the self-destruct’s initiation.

The schematics contain detailed descriptions of dozens of components, though most of these mirror!Burzam is confident House Cannith can produce in a timely manner, and your own Burzam grumbles he could do himself with a tenth of the budget his mirrorverse counterpart is quoting. The one stumbling block appears to be the battery to power the remote detonator. Per mirror!Dr. Flint’s commentary, as a supplemental security measure to ensure that Dulum was only destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion by her own, the Hand of Wrath requires a massive infusion of magic in order to “kick-start” it when utilized via the remote detonator. Mirror!Burzam is confident that an eldritch engine could be built to spec and transported to the appropriate site in approximately three-months, though he admits that time could be of the essence. The notes make the grizzly observation that it was expected, in the event of Dulum becoming compromised, that a disciple of Nonnagron – like Delthan — was expected to escape, construct a remote detonator, and sacrifice himself to fuel the activation.

Without constructing an eldritch engine from scratch, the notes give sizable shrift to improvising a power source out of a magical item of sufficient potency. Mirror!Burzam, while surrounded by such artifacts, neglected to send any along, though he is confident that the Argentum must surely have something that will do the trick, as they’re in the business of collecting such things. Though artifacts of such power might also be expropriated from other sources: For instance, somewhere within what was once the volcanic caldera that was once known as the Lake of Fire, now the headquarters of the Burning Legion, is something of monumental power which draws Fernia into an unnatural and permanently coterminous orbit.

In their discussion about the Lake of Fire, there is also a tangent of mirror!Burzam’s based upon records dug out of some archive whose name hurts to pronounce. Remembering the Nightmare War, the giants of Dulum had considered the possibility of another invasion by an extraplanar army while another plane was coterminous with Eberron. Included within the schematics supplied is what mirror!Burzam calls a “targeting module”, a device that allows for the activator of the Hand of Wrath to select which plane(s) of existence the Moonbreaker uses to do its dirty work. As the device requires a specially forged component attuned to each plane of existence to be used, Mirror!Burzam speculates that by plugging in the elemental residuum of a sufficiently powerful denizen of Fernia, it would be possible to ablate its becoming coterminous and even – potentially – throw it off its original orbit and send it hurtling off into planar the abyss. A thought also occurs for your purposes: As the Moonbreaker is the method for returning home, plugging in The Key for the component attuned to the Prime Material Plane should work to send you home when the Moonbreaker targets you, making being blown up after activating the remote detonator a feature, not a bug.

All of this talk of powerful artifacts also gets Talagos’mahrin’s ready to blow up a city full of mindhacked dragons, crazy elves, and the long-dead ghost-empress of giantkind! He apparently totally knows a guy who can hook the party up with the power source and attuned extraplanar components they need! There’s just one slight problem: Said guy is in Argonnessen. Which means he’s probably not so much a “guy” as a “male dragon”. Said guy is also Talagos’mahrin’s father-in-law. Which surely won’t be at all awkward for the World’s Most Interesting Dragon! And besides, you guys have always wanted to go to Argonnessen. This is clearly a chance to get intel on what to expect back home.

You have four paths before you, brave party, to move forward:
1) Continue to Dulum as planned and confront the evils that lay within.
2) Stay on Xen’drik and attempt to build the remote detonator using Delthan to activate the Hand of Wrath.
3) Return to Khorvaire and attempt to build the remote detonator using components extracted from House Cannith, the Argentum, Burning Legion, and/or something you come up with yourselves.
4) Venture to Argonnessen and attempt to build the remote detonator using components extracted from the Continent of Dragons.

Because you guys deserve *some* swag...

The assembled loot you pulled off the Tidelords plus some other beach scrounging, plus Destian’s duds and the loot from his guards courtesy of Eranna. Apparently she and Talagos’mahrin both thought it’d be amusing to have half-naked dwarves running around.

Better late-ish than never!

Wroat
—Choosing to Infiltrate Aundair by Dragonhawk: 50xp
—Sending the Albatross to Stormhome for Upgrading: 25xp, +All Listed Albatross Upgrades, -All Your RP
—Planning to Have the Albatross Explode from River Aundair Like the Kool-Aid Man: 25xp

The Aundairian Skies
—Arguing About the Merits of Orchestral Squeek Toys vs. Kazoos: 50xp
—Discovering Your Hitchhiker: 50xp
—Failing To Resist the Aura of Cuteness: 50xp
—Cleverly Working Within the Binds of Being Quasi-Charmed: 50xp
—Learning You Didn’t Pass Through Customs So Uneventfully: 100xp
—Partnering with the Talking Cat to Buy His Silence: 250xp, *+2^ Chaos Points, *+5^ Good Points

The Beaches of Arcanix
—Defeating the Aquaforged Tidelords: 600xp
—Defeating the Riptide Marauders: 250xp
—Defeating the Riptide Sureshots: 275xp
—Defeating the Riptide Titans: 900xp
—Saving All of the Beachgoer Mobs: 500xp, +10 Good Points
—Saving All of the Beachgoer Damsels: 100xp, +5 Good Points
—Saving 6 of the Beachgoer Beefcakes: 75xp, +2 Good Points
—Saving 1 of the Arcanix Blademarks: 25xp
—Foiling the Summoning of the General Via Blitzball: 1,000xp
—Convincing the Tidelord That Suicide Was the Only Option: 25xp
—Discovering the Origins of the Elemental Invasion: 250xpTotal: 9,800xp, +31 Good Points, +5 Law Points

Going to the beach just isn't enough! We must have a minigame arcade, too!

As a disclaimer, the name “Trader Johh’s” turns up a lot in these: It’s the restaurant attached to the Radiant Tide whose name had previous went unsaid.

Olladra’s Welcome: 99 Bottles of Ninja-Beer on the Wall…A local fraternity has sponsored a drinking contest at Trader Johh’s: Do you have the testicular fortitude to become the Beer-King of Olladra’s Welcome? (Rhetorically speaking for the ladies, of course.)Length: Hour to SessionType: SkillReward: Being crowned the Beer-King or -Queen of Olladra’s Weclome! And free food from Trader Johh’s

Olladra’s Welcome: Battle of the BardsTrader Johh’s is advertising a night filled with song and singing contest called the “battle of the bards”. Who knew bards could fight?Length: SessionType: SkillReward: Free food from Trader Johh’s and maybe getting to beat Fientia at her own game.

Olladra’s Welcome: How Do You Say “T-Shirt” in Common, Anyway?You pass by a Wall of Fame inside Trader Johh’s, dedicated to past winners of something called a “wet tunic competition”, with a vacant spot declaring it’d go to the winner of this year’s contest, to be determined during Olladra’s Welcome.
Length: Session
Type: Skill
Reward: A 5,000gp gift certificate to Alanorra & Associates’ Multiplanar Fashion Emporium for the winner; 3,000gp and 1,000gp gift certificates for the first and second runners-up. Also, a spot on Trader Johh’s Wall of Fame!

Olladra’s Welcome: Mother DearestEsravesh d’Lyrandar is simply dying to take her little girl’s friends to lunch. There is absolutely nothing ominous about this. Nothing at all.Length: Hour to SessionType: SocialReward: A day out with one of the most important women in Khorvairian commerce.

Olladra’s Welcome: Testing the Physics EngineA flier advertises an upcoming beach volleyball tournament, featuring animation of a pair of attractive co-eds playing volleyball, then blowing each other up with magic.Length: SessionType: SkillReward: A fabulous prize if you win! …or so it says.

Olladra’s Welcome: The Race for the Summer SunThe lobby of the Radiant Tide is abuzz with gossip about the upcoming qualifying heats for the big grand prix held during Olladra’s Welcome, the Race for the Summer Sun.Length: Session+Type: AdventureReward: An Eberronian grand prix? Surely something impressive if you can win.

Olladra’s Welcome: Wicked WipeoutOrganized teams of arcanists have waded into the ocean beyond the Radiant Tide and began conjuring waves. What could they possibly be for?Length: Hour to SessionType: SkillReward: At the very least that you have vanquished the horrible threat posed by arcanely summoned waves.

Because you deserve to know what the flying frell is going on in Aundair.

Opting to take Boranax up on his advice, the party sits in on a briefing intended for the muckety-mucks of the Brelish government! The relevant contents are excerpted below.

The DM reserves the right to add more fluff to this, which shall be done soonish.

History of the Current Crisis
By: Dr. Rin Amekk, Kesan ir’Hemden Professor Emeritus of Politics and Government at Queen Wroann University
“The roots of the current crisis grow from the Succession Crisis of 980. Queen Wrella I died on 3 Zarantyr of that year as her kingdom entered its darkest hour. The Thrane general offensive of the second half of 979, dubbed “The Orrery of Fate”, had succeeded beyond almost of its planners’ dreams. Operation Little Sypheros had cracked open the Kaskenny Line which held the lower River Aundair, while its follow-on Operation Big Sypheros had destabilized the entire northern front, swept away all Aundairian resistance between the River Aundair and the gates of Thaliost, and put Thrane in control of the western shores of the entry to Scion’s Sound. Operations Nymm and Eyre, aimed at cutting off Fairhaven from the rest of the nation and effectively cutting it in half, were dangerously close to their final objectives of Areksul and Lathleer, being within a day’s march of the former and at the gates of the latter. Even in the south, Operations Vult and Deuce Vult – better remembered to the rest of Khorvaire as the Sixth and Seventh Battles of Larunor – were checked, but at the cost of a 300,000 casualties could not afford with the Thranes advancing on every front.”

“It was in the midst of this strategic meltdown that the Aundairian system of government imploded. Wrella I was a resourceful and imperious woman, ruling Aundair as an assertive executive who was determined to defend existing royal prerogatives and appropriate for herself new ones which might be needed to run the state as she saw necessary. Her government ran preferred to run roughshod over the other institutions of power in Aundair, especially the Estates-General and the Arcane Congress in its exercise of temporal powers. Despite her ministry’s intragovernmental abrasiveness, she was fairly popular, even amongst those who were the victims of her government’s abuse: Her three decades of rule were widely seen as a time of rising prosperity and good, if not always civil, governance. But she made more than her fair share of enemies, who would make their strength known in the days and weeks after her death.”

“The succession crisis began in earnest on 23 Zarantyr, when the Estates-General refused to authorize the coronation of Crown Princess Dimara Sanne Aurala ir’Wynarn (regnal Aurala I). Such refusals were, despite their appearance, not uncommon in the thousand year history of Aundair: They were, traditionally, the Estates way of airing their grievances against the previous monarch and perhaps wring a concession or two out of the monarchy. What made the denial of 23 Zarantyr unparalleled was that, for the first time, the Estates were rejecting an heir apparent on the basis of the heir’s character: The Estates objected to Crown Princess Dimara’s choice of husbands, a formerly high-ranking member of House Vadalis prior to his excoriation, and the risk of ‘contaminating’ the royal bloodline with future heirs who would potentially be barred from the throne by the Korth Edicts. Such fears were merely pretextual: What was truly of concern was that Dimara was of the same mold as her mother, with reportedly even keener political instincts and skills.”

“What motivated the succession crisis was equal measures of desperation and connivance. By 23 Zarantyr, the military situation had begun to stabilize: After months of hard fighting, Operations Nymm and Eyre finally spent their offensive impetuses and ground to a halt short of their marks; Karrnath’s Seventh (Berovian) Army had landed at Terrinport at the western terminus of what had been the Golden Arch Bridge, taking the pressure off of forces on the Thaliost Peninsula and allowing those which had been defeated and scattered to begin to regroup; and Operation Golden Meteor had gotten off to a rousing start by throwing back the Thranes the seven miles they had captured in the previous sixth months of campaigning before Larunor, with the triumphant encirclement of the Larunor Crusade just weeks ahead. But the stabilizing military situation gave voice to in the Estates was a scream of anguish. The horrible fighting of the 960s and 970s between Aundair and Thrane in what had once been part of Galifarian Thrane had produced more than four million dead, wounded, and missing on both sides and more than half of that between 975 and 980. It was felt, and not without good cause, that the nobility of the south had paid more than their fair share of blood and treasure for the Aundairian crown’s international ambitions. The south also found itself conveniently the only place that was not in the grips of an existential crisis: Twenty years of cyclical invasion had given it a political coherence in the face of adversity that the noble delegations from the heartlands north and south of Fairhaven and the overrun Thaliost Peninsula lacked.”

“Where the southern representatives of the Estates were driven by fear for their material and familial safety, the Arcane Congress’s role in engineering the succession crisis was far more deliberate. Since the start of the Last War, two factions within the Congress had vied for the soul of the institution. On one hand were the Internationalists, who sought to preserve the Congress’s mission since its founding by Galifar I: The regulation and advancement of the arcane sciences and their usages for the good of all of Khorvaire. This meant keeping the Congress from getting tied up politics generally, and especially the politics of the Last War. The other side, the Nationalists, saw the Congress as a temporal player little different from the other great land magnates in Aundair: The Congress, after all, was the municipal and county government for Arcanix and its suburbs, the former being a bustling city of one-and-a-half million. (The Arcane Congress was, in its capacity as the sovereign of the Duchy of Arcanix and its subsidiary counties, represented in the Estates-General.) The role of the Congress should not only be to win the war in a way favorable to Aundair, but to get involved in both Aundairian and international politics to promote the clearly superior governmental philosophies of magocracy. At the time of Wrella I’s death, the Nationalists were in ascendency and, more importantly, they had a willing ally in Adal Tyman Bokk ir’Wynarn, Wrella I’s forth-born child hell-bent on acquiring the throne for himself.”

“Between a politically unified south and a self-aggrandizing Arcane Congress, a list of demands was presented to Crown Princess Dimara as prerequisites for the Estates to recognize her ascent to the throne. They amounted to a radical rewriting of the Aundairian constitution: Executive power would be ensconced in a triumvirate of the crown and representatives of the Estates and Arcane Congress, with governmental portfolios and appointments being allotted on a carefully calculated percentage basis; the Congress would be recognized as an independent institution within the governmental framework, the equal of both the crown and Estates; and the Estates would be rechartered as a full-time legislature and given a co-equal role in Aundair’s fiscal management. In-exchange, the Estates would undertake internal reforms to remove the final feudal barriers to conscription and the full resources of the Arcane Congress would be put at the hands of the crown. For added emphasis, the point was made that if the Crown Princess proved unwilling to negotiate, the Estates would recognize the succession of Adal.”

“From the existing sources, it is difficult to ascertain what Crown Princess Dimara intended to do until 19 Olarune: By some accounts, she raged incessantly about the Estates’ temerity and would sooner have had Fairhaven occupied by Thranes than accede to their blackmail; by others, she was willing to take the bitter pill to get back to the more important work of ejecting the Thranes from her kingdom. On 19 Olarune, however, the situation changed dramatically, as Operation Golden Meteor – which had been launched without the crown’s authorization, as a “demonstration” of the alliance which the Arcane Congress and Estates were fronting – reached its zenith with the encirclement of the Larunor Crusade, routing of the remnants of the Southwestern Crusade, and the capture of more than a quarter-million Thrane prisoners. Operation Golden Meteor had produced the greatest Aundairian battlefield victory in a generation, if not the entire war: It would be impossible to resist the demands before Dimara after it. Though it is a credit to the future Aurala I’s political skills that she was not forced to accept all of the Estates’ demands: After several weeks of fierce internal debate with the Arcane Congress and mobilizing of the members of the Estates from Thrane-overrun territory desperate for any kind of counteroffensive, Dimara succeeded in driving the Estates to back down from their demand for the transformation of that body into a permanently convened legislature. In-exchange, Dimara accepted the ‘unity constitution’ and a ‘unity government’ under its power-sharing agreement, as well the recognition of the Arcane Congress’s equality of stature, and was crowned Queen Aurala I on 9 Therendor, 980.”

The Current Crisis and Its State of Play
By: Col. Ihigo Retzen (Home Guard Intelligence), Maj. Boranax ir’Wynarn (King’s Citadel), Urik Tannan, Deputy Director of Intelligence Analysis (Dark Lanterns)
“From the available facts, it appears that the unity government is being dismembered by a well planned and well orchestrated coup d’main. The first phase of the process appears to have begun during the second two weeks of Olarune or the first of Therendor, though we cannot be precisely sure of the exact start date. Several mid-ranking officials in the Chancellories of Arcana, the Interior, and War were arrested on sundry charges of embezzlement, contraband trafficking, misappropriation of state resources, and other sundry crimes. These were followed by a wave of resignations and retirements from various military and civil posts, and followed by an even bigger round of arrests for plausible, if not entirely believable, slights against the state. What has been most striking has been that, in the churning cauldron of arrests, retirements, and resignations is that very few, if any, have been aligned with the ‘royalist’ wing of the Aundairian government and the efficiency with which organizational losses have been made good. To date, six cabinet ministers, twenty-two admirals, ninety-one generals, and one-hundred fifty-five agency heads and deputy cabinet ministers have resigned, retired, or been arrested. We have lost count of the number of those further down the organizational charts who have experienced churn. It can safely be assumed that in order to make these kinds of changes and keep the government from collapsing, that a good deal of preparatory work went into the purge prior to its commencing.

“The second phase of the purge appears to have begun on 28 Eyre. It was on that date that Aarott’s Presidium crashed under extremely mysterious circumstances. This act was credited by the Aundairian crown to a warforged and pair of dragons visiting a prisoner incarcerated aboard Aarott’s Presidium as a diversionary action to allow for the kidnapping of Princess Austasia Dimara Wreyna ir’Wynarn, then on holiday somewhere between Wroat and Hatheril at the behest of Crown Prince Adal. In the wake of the crash, the Crown Prince has been stripped of his title and is about to stand trial for his crimes. Sizable elements of the regular have been mobilized and recent reserve classes recalled in anticipation of this, should it provoke a negative reaction from Adal’s political allies.

“This all seems to be a deception promulgated for domestic consumption: Brelish customs authorities have no record of a royal delegation entering Breland through any of the expected ports of entry, nor is there any record of Princess Austasia’s being in Breland beyond her arrival and departure from Wroat. (A series of articles fed to the Times (of Wroat) chronicling her travels has been debunked as having originated from, and likely been fabricated by, the castellan of an estate on Brokenblade Island.) Furthermore, the Aundairians have made no official attempt to organize a search of the Wroat-Hatheril corridor, instead leaving it to adventurers and mercenaries motivated by the generous cash reward offered for Austasia’s return. While deceptive, the lie has provided a remarkably good excuse with which to depose the Crown Prince, whose show trial is now looming large.”

“The only pieces of evidence available to support the thesis that Adal kidnapped Austasia is the odd circumstances which prevailed in Terminus Station during the first weeks of Therendor. While the details are still sketchy and have been much stonewalled by House Orien, it appears that a squad-level detachment of Knights Phantom were operating within the station, searching for someone of import. House Orien has refused to comment one way or the other, and the only testimony we have is from a handful of witnesses who have been willing to come forward, suggesting a cover-up by either the Aundairians or House Orien. (The witnesses also mention the recurring role of an adventuring party who left a member of the Arcane Congress nude and unconscious on a rail platform, so they are not being treated as entirely credible.) If the Aundairians were searching for Princess Austasia, however, it suggests even more is going on than previously assumed, as that would have had Aundairian special forces in Sharn looking for a missing princess who would not be ‘kidnapped’ for another eight weeks.”

“Far more credible evidence exists that the crashing of Aarott’s Presidium was an event independent of the current political situation. Or, at the very least, that the Aundairian crown is attempting to repurpose it for its own political advantage. The Dark Lantern station-master in Fairhaven has managed to acquire transcripts of some of the interviews with survivors and interrogations of recaptured prisoners. They paint a markedly different picture than what is being spun by Fairhold: They speak of a riot breaking out and, in the commotion, the ‘perpetrators’ of the crime throwing themselves into the melee to protect the guards and/or try to restore order. They also speak of the unloading and detonating of a strange arcane device deep in the bowels of the prison during the riot: This conforms with our own intelligence assets crediting a Banishment bomb as the culprit in the preliminary drafts of the investigative report. They also speak of the riot being instigated, and the Banishment bomb being emplaced, by warforged bearing the emblem of a thirteen-spiked gauntlet: Without the opportunity to further interrogate the witnesses on this subject, it is impossible to say with certainty who or what the gauntlet symbolized. But at first blush, it bears a startlingly resemblance to the descriptions of the insignia of the Lord of Blades, warranting further investigation at the very least.”

“In light of the political advantages and evidence to the contrary, it is the official position of the Brelish intelligence community that Princess Austasia has not been kidnapped and that there is no evidence to indicate that she has been on Brelish soil during this past year. At this juncture, no insight can be provided as to why the Aundairian government continues to advance this theory, beyond that it is politically advantageous to Queen Aurala I if her daughter and heir apparent was kidnapped as an act of political retaliation. We can only offer one closing thesis: If we accept that our first position was incorrect – that Princess Austasia has, contrary to our best knowledge, infiltrated Brelish territory – then there is a possible reconciliation for the oddness at Terminus Station and the rationale of the kidnapping plot. If Austasia were to arrive in Breland at the start of Therendor, that would coincide with the purge beginning to have its bite, and the time when it would make the most sense for the heir apparent and most likely target of potential retaliation to go incommunicado. Whether the presence of Knight Phantoms in Sharn and Austasia’s subsequent appearance in Wroat were plots undertaken by different factions or all the work of the Aundairian crown cannot be speculated upon, but under this scenario it seems obvious that the ruse was coming apart by 28 Eyre, in which the perfect marriage of political opportunities were presented, as a new lies could be fashioned to explain Austasia’s being out of sight and simultaneously blame it on the last bastion of opposition in Fairhaven. But, this remains wholly conjecture, no matter how neatly it ties up certain loose threads.”

The Albatross, Part Two
—Updating Mara on What Was Learned from Khaal: 75xp
—Seeing Neltharion’s Karmic Punishment for Making Vanne Cry: 50xp
—Taking Vanne With You to See Ligriv: 75xp

Brokenblade Island
—Waving at the Warforged Titan, Again: 25xp
—Learning Where All the Airships Went During “A Royal Pain in the…”; 50xp
—Burzam’s Semantic Shenanigans: 100xp, +2 Reputation Points

Casa ir’Clarn
—Refrain From Intrudin’ When the Room Be Boomin’: 50xp
—Barging into Ligriv’s Mansion-Barn: 100xp
—Doing the Barging, And Everything Else, With Panache: 50xp
—Panache Which Also Tastes Good With Syrup: 50xp
—Catching Up With Ligriv and Aurim: 100xp
—Learning of Aurim’s Plans To Open Up the Molten Front: 50xp
—Learning That Ligriv Has An Accusing Parlor: 25xp
—Visiting Ligriv’s Accusing Parlor: 50xp
—Partaking in the Accusing Parlor’s Bubble Pipes and Dramatic Lighting: 75xp
—Entertaining Ligriv’s Theory About Ninja-Goblins: 150xp
—Learning That Ligriv Also Has An Angrydome: 25xp
—What’s Insurance? It’s Like Gambling, Except You Hope to Lose: 25xp
—Coming Up With a Plan To Infiltrate the Theater: 100xp
—Visiting Ligriv’s Angrydome: 75xp
—Vanne’s Playing Kaiju: 75xp

The Albatross, Part Three
—Getting Tuxed Up to Visit the North Bank Theater: 50xp
—Contacting Dr. Flint: 50xp
—Being Briefed on Mara’s Adventures: 75xp
—Making A State Function Of Your Trip to the Theater: 100xp, +10 Reputation Points

The Albatross, Part Four
—Making Sure No One Had Prepared Exploding Runes Today: 50xp
—Receiving A Bill For the Property Damage of Your Adventuring: 50xp
—Being Given A Daishou By People Whose Leader You Just Killed: 25xp

You have braved the worst that the enemy can throw at you, and have a lot of swag for your troubles!

You people keep getting money. Either I’m a great DM, or a terrible one: Included below are all that you have looted from the dead and your own captives, as well as what little bits you manage to scavenge from the hulk of the enemy’s airship.

A more thorough write-up of events is pending, when I can find the motivation to do it. …which means probably not until after the bar.

How is that even when you're sidequesting you're still dinging? And getting absurd amounts of treasure?

Yep, folks, you’re now L8. Fun times!

Sewer Noodling Postscript
You feel a twinge of guilt as the last fleeing merrow is dragged into the central cistern by Ol’ Gobbla: But only a little, as the merrow wasn’t exactly the sort who you’d take to social gatherings. But death-by-devil-croc is just not a good way to go, even for a murderous aquatic ogre. With Ol’ Gobbla contenting himself on one of his former handlers, you are free to cut off the heads of the dead ogres which you’ve just felled. A total of twenty are collected: 10,000gp is not a bad day’s work, despite Pappy Merrow’s axe-work and Mammy Merrow getting the drop on Gwynne.

With their heads secured, you proceed to explore the rest of the impromptu warren they’d managed to construct for themselves in the sewers: Mercifully, there are no more surprises waiting for you, and Ol’ Gobbla seems intent to give you wide berth following your inflicting of pain upon him. Well, you do have one surprise in store for you: The amount of stuff that the merrows have. Piles upon piles of crates, barrels, coffers, chests, and various other loot containers litter the sewer-warren: As with any large amount of loot, some of it looks rather valuable, but some of it also looks rather useless. Burzam, Reine, and Blackfist set about looking for suitable shinies to sate their hunger for shiny things, while Gwynne and Tevi continue deeper into the warren to discover a rather large and ramshackle shack.

Venturing inside, the two discover sufficient accommodations for each and every merrow on the ground floor, as well as yet more barracks-style bedding and private chambers for Mammy and Pappy upstairs. Their search draws them to Mammy’s room, which is rather better kept than the rest of the shack, and is filled with maps and books to boot! Certainly not things you’d expect to find in a merrow’s warren. Upon examining the books, you find that they’re a meticulously kept log of the piracy and salvage operations undertaken by the merrows: That they were sinking ships and then looting them out in the Hilt certainly explains where all of the swag came from. You also discover that the merrows of this sewer-warren had come to lead an impressive alliance of merrows, skrags, and skum to engage in a rather organized bid to control this section of the sewers. All told from the records, you count that this warren had 34 members, of whom you’ve killed or routed 22: The rest are, by the logs, out on patrol or salvage. You also discern the location of the primary skrag colony in the region, plus what seems to be a rather sizable skum settlement in the vicinity.

Stowing away the logs and maps, the party is reunited! And work is done processing loot: The corpses of the dead merrows are stripped and their useful contents placed in your extradimensional spaces, while useful-looking containers are searched and they, or their contents, are lashed onto Blackfist’s back. Having a Large-sized warforged to play pack mule is incredibly nice, isn’t it? All told a dozen chests, crates, and other containers are lashed to him and, to top it all off, he is also yoked to a large slab of aquasteel which Burzam insists upon bringing with you, if only to produce more awesome weapons of the sort the Sewerhome have. With Blackfist properly burdened, you at last can start making your way back to the surface! The going is slow, given Blackfist’s carrying and dragging Host only knows how much weight, but you take it nice and easy, making it back topside with no major interruptions.

Dropping off your loot at Magical Mayhem for identification, you proceed over to the Bureau of Sanitation to collect your bounty. The bureaucrats running the place are flabbergasted by the number of merrow heads you present: They hadn’t paid out twenty bounties in the past five months. They gleefully give you your money and express their thanks: They become a bit more circumspect when they are informed that the merrow are engaged in piracy, but will pass the news along to the Port Authority and City Watch.

Money in hand and a job well done, you retire for the day. Ah, the life of an adventurer…

Big Game Hunter: Fluffiwuffikens
You triumphantly inspect your prize: An owlbear that has flapped itself into exhaustion, and careened into a statue in the Upper Dura’s Highhold district. Fanfare trumpets as you work on disentangling the great beast from the stone dwarf it came to rest upon, while Kingu hovers down and joins you, getting more than a few squeezes from his new squeeze. He’s earned it, what with goring Oerz and dropping a tree onto an unsuspecting wyvern. And also dropping said tree onto whatever unfortunate souls might be in the ward beneath you. Probably should’ve thought that one through a bit more, Your Majesty.

Your revelry is ended as those who had been pursuing the pursuers arrive: Aerial troops from the Daggerwatch district, who joined the chase after it veered through the heart of the Brelish military’s presence in the city. A steady stream of flying cavalry, mounted upon warforged raptors and magebred flyers, circle above and assess the situation. They’re joined quickly thereafter by literal boatloads of red-cloaked troops, as several airships arrive upon the scene and disgorge their human cargo. With a company’s worth forces pouring into the area, the owlbear – and you – are rather quickly secured. Deciding that you are somewhat overmatched, you peaceably go with the nice men with the heavy repeating crossbows and readied wands.

After being escorted back to Daggerwatch, you are dressed down by the commander of the city’s garrison: You know you’ve made it when your intelligence is being insulted by the highest-ranking military man in the city! The riot act you are read includes violation of a dozen sky traffic ordinances, failure to heed multiple guidance orders from Sharn Air Traffic Control, violation of restricted military airspace, and several citations of property damage. You cannot help but take some solace that the jamming of Northeast Control isn’t laid upon your head, but you keep mum about it, lest you get blamed for it anyway. Your upbraiding is concluded with banishment to the stockade, where the general intends to keep you until the wheels of justice can, in due time, crush you. You stay the night therein: All-in-all, it’s not too bad, all things considered. Certainly better than having to pitch camp in somewhere like the X-742 Drainage Cluster.

Your lifetime internment in the stockades is interrupted when, in the morning, a grinning Boranax greets you with the good news: You’re free! The King’s Citadel looks after its own, after all. And that if you ever try something as stupid as a high-speed chase across the Upper Wards again, he’ll personally make sure you stay locked up. He also points out that the fines and penalties leveled against the party, totaling some 20,000gp, are your problem and not his. But that can be dealt with later: Sprung from prison, you collect your shackled owlbear and return to Crystal Bridge! Presenting it, Lady ir’Yalan is overjoyed to have cute widdle Fluffwuffikens back! (For his part, Fluffiwuffikens becomes something of an overaffectionate lapdog when united with his elderly mistress.) So overjoyed that she’s willing to pay off the copious bills you incurred finding her pet! And declaring an open door policy for the rescuers of her baby. (Fluffiwuffkens doesn’t seem particularly enamored with you ever returning. Can’t blame him for that, either.)

And so, if delayed a bit by your night in the clink, you collect your 10,000gp bounty! And the worst part about it all? Vanne wants to know when you can do it again.

Art & Mundane Objects
Barrel of Riedran spices, with “PROPERTY OF TEZDARBROS. TRADING CO.” emblazoned upon it in Dal Quor [x2]
Battle-scarred aquasteel apparatus of the crab bearing the faded markings over the Imperial Galifarian Navy
Crate of exquisitely soft furs bearing the worn insignia of House Vadalis [x3]
Crude statuette of a dragon hewn from a sea cat femur
Logbooks of Mammy Merrow, detailing the pirating operations of the merrow kinfolk
Map of the Hilt’s sea floor, indicating several points of interest
Map of the sewers, showing several points of interest near the X-742 Drainage Cluster
Ornate shimmersteel cavalry saber with bejeweled hilt and sheath
Royal wardrobe, circa 893 A.K., of Princess-Consort Casopi ir’Wynarn, last Archduchess of Sharn
Set of three matching extradimensional steamer trunks bearing the heraldry of the Prince of the Hilt
Well-preserved and life-like marble bust of “Mad” King Galifar XII
Well-preserved soarwood figurehead shaped like a comely mermaid

Cash, Coins, and Gems
270pp in Galifarian and Brelish mintage
6,526gp in Galifarian, Brelish, Cyran, and Aundairian mintage
14,336sp in Brelish and Cyran mintage
10,000gp letter-of-credit from the City of Sharn
10,000gp letter-of-credit from Teydren ir’Yalan
Fist-sized uncut diamond of a distinctly pink hue
Assorted other gems estimated at ~3,000gp in value

Active SidequestsAn Invitation You Cannot RefuseArandmi, the leader of the Surrebec adventuring party, seeks a meeting with you. Judging by what her partymates said, you suspect she’s not the sort to take rejection well.Length: HourType: SocialReward: The better question is whether you want to find out what might happen if you make her mad.

Big Game Hunter: Extreme AnglingCommercial fisherman in the Hilt have become skittish about something that’s recent entered their fishing grounds. Sounds like adventure calling to me!Length: SessionType: AdventureReward: Reputation; other rewards as appropriate if real threat is posed.

Big Game Hunter: Sewer Noodlers IIThe merrows were a breeze; think you’re up for something a bit bigger, like skrags?Length: SessionType: CombatReward: 2,500gp per person, plus 1,000gp per skrag head presented to the Port Authority; right of salvage to anything in the skrags’ possession.

Big Game Hunter: A Visible ThreatThe Palace of the Indomitable Pyroclasm seeks your assistance in tracking down and killing a “bezekira”. Whatever one of those is.Length: SessionType: SkillReward: Attachment to the maharani’s retinue as personal retainers; includes, amongst other things, honorary citizenship from the City of Brass and the ability to enter the city freely.

Cultural Assimilation 101The tceffessam have been doing hard labor down in the Lower Dura: It’s time to check in on them.Length: Hour to SessionType: SocialReward: You expect monetary compensation for checking in on your friends? For shame!

Into the Wild Blue YonderIt takes more than just a pilot to make an airship fly: Provisions need to be procured and personnel recruited. Both tasks await you.Length: HourType: SocialReward: S.S. Albatross officially made ready for flight.

Puttin’ on the R—…SkybridgeYou have an out-standing dinner date with Valara d’Orien at the Celestial Vista. The food there is to die for. And it’s sufficiently exclusive you can probably only get in posthumously.Length: Hour to SessionType: SocialReward: A night out on the town at Sharn’s most famous restaurant, complete with stories of all the trouble Dr. Flint has caused over the years.

Shipwrecks Happen in the Oddest PlacesYou recovered a startling number of Galifarian-vintage royal items from the merrows’ sewer-warren. Rather coincidental, don’t you think? Might be worth investigating.Length: Hour to SessionType: AdventureReward: Some answers about why you discovered so much stuff relating to late Galifarian Breland in the merrows’ possession.

We Want to Live in a Yellow Submarine(-Airship)Kingu had a brilliant idea: Make your shiny new airship submersible! You really ought to look into that.Length: HourType: SocialReward: Cost and time requirements to make the Albatross fly underwater. And the chance to begin construction thereof.

Oh, What Do You Do With a Dead Dra~gon, Ear~ly in the Mor~ning?Burzam has questions for your friendly neighborhood corpse. And do you intend to do with that corpse, anyway?Length: SessionType: AdventureReward: Answers to Burzam’s question; various other potential things depending upon what you do with the corpse.

You and What Army?Reclaiming Droaam in the name of your – and Breland’s – name will not be easy. You’ll need an army: The best place to start are those Droaamite ex-pats who reside in the Lower Dura.Length: Hour to SessionType: SocialReward: The first small step towards liberating Droaam from the Daughters of Sora Kell.

120,000gp for the sellable bits, folks.

Upon returning home, you make contact with your old friend Balgrim: He’s looking rather well, given he was dead not too long ago. Apparently even death won’t keep him out of the game, though, as his eyes light up when you say you’re in the market to vend a few things: He immediately wants the Bling Throne of Awesomeness, which means that news of your haul precedes you. You never thought you could see such an avaricious dwarf look heartbroken, but Balgrim does when you inform him that the Bling Throne of Awesomeness is not for sale.

It takes several weeks to process the magnitude of your loot haul, with Balgrim looking more than a little disappointed a few times as you take away choice items other than the Bling Throne of Awesomeness. After taking it all in and consulting with his network of contacts, he informs you that the best he can do for the lot of goods you’re intent to sell is 120,000gp. You do a double-take and make sure he didn’t miss a zero: That’s more money than you’ve ever seen before. And he’s sad that that’s “all” he can offer you.

Are these the plights that the rich face? If so, you can totally dig it. So, party, do you take his offer?

Any game in which the PCs aren't given the chance to be ennobled is just failing at life.

Upon your return to Eberron and subsequent debriefing by the King’s Citadel, you are made aware that His Majesty, King Boranel, wishes to extend his personal thanks for the services you have rendered to the Brelish crown both in rooting out the Austasia impersonator in the court of Luken ir’Clarn and for venturing to the Ark. (Mara almost does a spit-take at what happened at Luken’s place having reached the ears of the Brelish crown.) As was promised by the King’s Citadel, non-monetary compensation is offered to you. individually, in ascension to a title of nobility, property, or other appropriate sinecure. A charter of incorporation is also granted to your adventuring company, granting it certain privileges enshrined in the Code of Galifar and reaffirmed by the Thronehold Accords and, thus, are which international in their scope. (The principal of which is the power to request adjudication of criminal proceedings against the adventuring company’s members by House Deneith or other, comparable international organization with judicial powers.) In order for it to take effect, you will have to come up with a name for your merry band.

On individual rewards, below is a buffet of options immediately offered by the King’s Citadel: Every option is capable of providing the PCs with approximately the same annual income, which is sufficient to support a comfortable, if not lavish, existence for the duration of the holding of the property or sinecure. (With a default assumption, with titles and offices, that such will run until the PC chooses to leave the post or dies, whichever comes first.) This income is not a quantified player resource: It is more fluffy reward for a job well-done on behalf of the Brelish crown in returning with what you did from spess. Additionally, additional perks are available depending upon whether a title or property are acquired: PCs opting to assume a title or office qualify to be elected to the Brelish House of Lords, while those opting to claim property are qualified for election to the House of Freeholders. Selecting either qualifies PCs to vote in Brelish elections.

The list below is by no means exhaustive and the Brelish crown is willing to make a good faith, if low-key, effort to make other arrangements as desired by the party. Such arrangements must, however, roughly conform in their scope and be within the Brelish crown’s ability to grant.

Titles & Offices:Chancellor of Ivymoor Academy
Have you ever wanted to run a school? Well, this is your chance! Nestled on a well-manicured campus in the Mithril Towers, this exclusive all-girls finishing school is one of the preferred educational establishments of Sharn’s rich and powerful and its head office is vacant. The role of its Chancellor is what the officeholder makes of it: Traditionally, it has been treated as a sinecure meted out to one of the students’ parents, with day-to-day operations being the domain of a Headmistress selected by the faculty. The Academy’s articles of incorporation from the Crown, however, give the Chancellor – as the King’s duly-appointed representative – broad powers to structure the school’s administration as he or she sees fit.

Chief Sanitation Officer for the City of Galethspyre
Ever wonder who keeps the excrement that leaves your body from stinking up the city? Who tends to the sewers and takes out the trash? Well, that falls to the brave men and women of the city’s Sanitation Department, and hopefully you, as their leader. The job is really a breeze: The chief sanitation officer seems to change every other day, so the bureaucracy is quite good at keeping the lights on without much attention from its nominal boss. It’s a win-win for both the chief sanitation officer and the rest of the Department, as it makes this sinecure virtually demandless on officeholders while giving maximal autonomy to the Department’s worker bees.

Chief Sanitation Officer for the City of Sharn
It’s like being the Chief Sanitation Officer in Galethspyre, except you’re expected to actively patrol the sewers and contend with things like giant sewer crocodiles, aberrant plant monsters, and the occasional eldritch abomination some wizard thought was a good idea to flush down the toilet. A normal day at the office, really, for the sinecure-holding adventurer who wants something more out of life.

Governor-General of Graywall
It’s good to be king! Sort of. Until 986, the governor-general of Graywall was the most powerful Brelish political position outside of Wroat, being the de facto sovereign of all lands west of the Graywall Mountains. (What are, today, the Shadow Marches and Droamm.) With the overthrowing of the Crown’s colonial regime in Droamm and the recognition of the independence of the Shadow Marches, the title has been without a holder for more than a decade. The Crown is prepared to recognize the sovereignty of any polity created by a bearer of this title on lands that were once Brelish beyond the Graywall Mountains, as well as offer protectorate status to it.

His Majesty’s Magistrate of Laws at Large
Have you ever yearned to mete out justice to those that transgress against the laws of the land? Or what you think the laws of the land are? Perhaps you would be interested in an appointment as one of His Majesty’s justices of the peace, empowered to roam the land and attend to any and all breaches of the law you can find? It’s the ultimate sinecure for those who’re interested in making their own schedules in life: Or, for that matter, if you’ve always wanted to see those filthy lawbreakers properly punished.

Honorary Knight-Captain of the Ursine Guards
Have you ever wanted your very own warbear? Do you yearn to be called “sir” without enduring the privations of barracks life? Well then, this is the appointment with the Greens and Irons is for you! A billet in the Honor Guard of the Royal Bear Guards is provided with this title, as is a knighting into the Order of the Ursus bequeathed to grant you noble station consummate to your privileged place of leadership. And, of course, the obligatory magebred brown bear: Can’t very well have a bear cavalier without a proper mount, can you?

Inspector General of the Terminus District
Terminus is the great entry-point of Sharn: While House Orien’s lightning rail station is beyond the reach of the Brelish crown’s customs enforcement powers, the adjoining warehouse district is not. His Majesty requires someone who maintains cordial relations with House Orien to oversee his customs enforcers in the warehouse district in the Terminus District. “Oversee” is, of course, a relative term: Most of the time, inspectors general are absent. Or on the take. Or both.

Viscount of Baranthia
The Viscounty of Baranthia was, once upon a time, one of the most prosperous and prestigious noble incorporations in all of Breland: Sitting atop the major east-west trade road and well-endowed with mineral resources streaming out of the Howling Peaks, it was well-positioned to maintain its preeminence for the foreseeable future. The fortunes of the Viscounts of Baranthia began to wane in the late 950s, when the long discussed lightning rail line between Revan and Dragonroost finally broke ground; in the 960s, their position eroded into oblivion as ex-Deneith goblinoid mercenaries moved into the mountains and began organizing the tribes, whose raids first shut down access to the lucrative mines of the Howling Peaks and then which descended out of the foothills into the wider Viscounty. The final shoe fell in 972, when the last Viscount of Baranthia fell during the Disaster at the Marguul Pass. The raiders took the initiative and banded together to lay siege to the bloodied, exhausted, and grieving forces at Baran’s Keep: The resulting bloodbath resulted in the abandonment of much of the Viscounty to the monsters and raiders which may descend from the mountains.

His Majesty will honor any and all gains made by those who take-up the vacant title in restoring the defunct polity, though such is not required to receive the benefit of ennobling it offers.

Estates:Lair of the Urban Sophisticate
A cozy one bedroom, one bathroom loft located in the heights of the Oak Towers District in Sharn’s Upper Northedge ward. The perfect nook for those seeking a chic but low-key existence, with a great view of the district’s Aereni-influenced architectural flavor. Not recommended for those who are uncomfortable with elves or their religious practices: Previous owner was and all of his remains have not yet been recovered.

Abode of the Nouveau Rich
This small two bedroom, two bathroom townhouse in the Crystal Bridge district in Sharn’s Upper Northedge ward is ideal for the newly arrived on Sharn’s social scene. Residing in one of the most prestigious districts in the city, you can’t help but become the talk of the gossip circuit: You’d best hope that you only remain the talk of the gossip circuit, however, for the well-established families of Crystal Bridge and their extensive private security forces do not take kindly to the peace and quiet of the district being violated. The previous owner, and his connections to the Boromar Clan, discovered that the hard way.

A Bargain-Hunter’s Delight
This well-manicured eight bedroom, five bathroom mansion seems strangely out of place in the Highwater District of the Upper Dura ward: It took not-insubstantial amounts of resources to build, and maintain, the intricate stonework and handsome landscaping, and that sort of money usually is not found in the drab Upper Dura. The previous owner, however, could not afford even a quarter of this in a more prestigious district, which allowed him to build bigger than he otherwise would’ve given the cheapness of the Highwater District. Alas, his penny-pinching led him to pick a fight with a siege crab over a loose platinum piece. You can guess how the rest of the story ends.

Real Estate Development for Dummies
The recent ravaging of the Lower Dura ward in Sharn has led to a massive increase in bankruptcies and other forms of receivership, with the Crown coming into possession of sizable chunks of prime real estate. The Crown is prepared to offer you the title to a city block in the district of Callestan that was utterly destroyed by the fires and fighting that rocked the ward. What you do with it is up to you, so long as its property taxes are paid on time.

The Fate of Fort Yarith
In 901 A.K., Queen Wroann ordered that Yarith Island, a 127-acre plot of land in the Dagger River north of Sharn, be fortified as part of Breland’s first round of defensive entrenchment began as the War of Galifarian Succession became evermore intractable. The small strongpoint was completed in 904, with modernizations subsequently in 932 and 957. In 981, with another round of modernization badly being needed, the Brelish crown opted to abandon the position in light of no serious threat emanating from upriver. For the past seventeen years the fortress has been allowed to decay, though most of its structures remain intact if not in top condition.

Something of a fixer-upper, but a perfect abode for the martially minded. Or the paranoid sort who want 30’ tall walls, but do not want to look paranoid.

Galathmoor Manor
Over the years, the term “estate” has been diluted horribly: It has come to mean things like a broom closet in an exclusive area of Sharn or a decrepit fort in the middle of nowhere. No, what real men want is a genuine estate: A palatial manor, with hundreds of acres of adjoining farmland tended by serfs bound to the land and their landlord’s whims! Alas, as serfdom was abolished centuries ago, you’ll have to suffer merely having the manor and hundreds of acres of cultivated adjoining farmland.
Located on the placid southern shores of Lake Silver, this estate was once the hereditary property of the Duke of Shavalant: Alas, the latest Duke ran off to Sharn and got himself into a fair bit of debt and, with property taxes due, was forced to either forfeit his hereditary title or the estate. Luckily for you, he chose to keep his title.

The Land Grant to End All Land Grants
Obviously, some adventurers want to build a kingdom with their own two hands. Alas, the geopolitics of Khorvaire make that rather hard. The Kingdom of Breland is willing to meet you halfway, though, with as many titles of nobility as you care to create for yourself, as well as a hands-off administrative posture, if you can succeed in carving a functioning polity out of the wildness of the King’s Forest.

His Majesty is willing to offer you 20,000 acres in eastern Breland, in the heart of the King’s Forest, near the Zilargo frontier. To do with what you will and build what shall be built.

In which Kingu is awesome, you gain a hitchhiker, and the enomority of your task should you eschew logic is present.

Race for Your Life, Party Brown!
The vile alien presence, that of Bolothamogg unleashed from its prison, caresses your minds. Terror and dread race through your thoughts, for who only knows what horrors are in store for you after having seen what the Defiler had done to both the woeforged and the abeils of the Apiary. And that had been when the Sealed Evil in a Can had actually been sealed away!

“YES, MY PETS. I AM FREE. AT LONGLAST, THESHACKLES OF THECOAUTLSHAVEBEENSUNDERED, AND NOW—“

Bolothamogg’s horrific bellowing in your own mind is cut-off by a scream of agony that would make you double over in pain for its wretchedness, but for that it was happening to such a nice Elder Evil. A cacophonous whooshing sound reverberates and the ceiling of the Throne Room is ripped off of the palace! A maelstrom of almost unimaginable fury roars above you, and in the distance you can see buildings alternately being ripped out of the ground or splintering under the seismic activity that rumbles beneath you. You and your allies frantically sprint down the rampways that lead to the Ydnamron, dodging pieces of aerial detritus from the palace collapsing around, arriving on the deck of the Ydnamron as the great crystalline pathways collapse behind you.

Once aboard, Nidrom, Harolizat, and Surrag make their way to the bridge of the amazing airship: A few moments after they’ve disappeared, two great wing-sails deploy from the rear flanks of the ship and its propulsion system hums to life, surging forward as the hanger in which it resided comes raining down around it. And you! You hang on for dear life as the cumbersome craft bounces hither and yon, weaving furiously to escape the imploding palace, before at long last you escape with your life, but not your shorts, intact.

The world you see before is markedly…smaller, with the horizon eerily closer than it was when you entered the Palace of Harmonious Order. Which, you realize, is not your eyes fooling you: It really is closer, for the cavern that houses the Apiary is rapidly collapsing in on itself, with the magic that produced the extradimensional pocket in which the Apiary existed having been destroyed by the death of Queen Sitris’Aniram. And into this whirling maelstrom of collapsing skylines and Siberys shard whirlwinds your skyship turns, with the tceffessam apparently grimly determined to see through your plan to the bitter end.

Clearly, this isn’t going to be your day. Your stomach concurs, as the buffeting winds and shrapnel-filled plumes of debris force you to take cover as the ship makes its way to the Citadel of Everflowing Aerophonia. As you approach it, you first notice that a gargantuan purple crystal floats above a Siberys shard ziggurat: As you get closer, the crystal has been cleaved in half, the upper half atomized into an orbiting debris field and the lower half boasting several deeper fishers. Judging by the damage to it, and the increasingly unstable wind effects, the asari succeeded.

A voice warbles and taunts in your mind as you into orbit over the shattered roof of the Citadel. It is not Bolothamogg: Your mind is not being fondled by an evil beyond description. You look around for where the telepathic voice could be coming from, when suddenly hear rumbling below you and find yourself staring eye-to-eye with what looks like the biggest three-eyed catfish your nightmares could produce as it emerges from the rubble of the Citadel. It is at least fifty feet long, with four menacing tentacles flaying and, just to make it even worse, it’s flying.

The deck of the Ydnamron bucks and rolls as Nidrom frantically wheels the airship out of the path of a gargantuan Siberys shard hurtling towards. Terridas is not so lucky, with the shard impaling it from the right and proceeding to burst through the center of its head, obliterating all of its eyes as it passed through in an explosion of gore and gray matter. The space horror fish rolls over mid-air and then hurtles earthward, with its brain having been blown out of its head. Even over the winds and distance, you can hear the titanic crash of eighty tons of flying fish hitting the ground.

With the immediate threat eliminated, all eyes turn back to the roof of the Citadel. You see at least a dozen blue humanoids with static head-tentacles: None are moving and most are in rather oddly contorted positions. But then, climbing out from some of the rubble, you see a live one! And then another! In all, nine emerge: Three are the deep blue color of the contorted corpses, but the other six are pale green and seemingly ooze-covered. From the whoops of Pehsemmef, you know you’ve found the survivors your looking for: A rope is tossed overboard and they’re helped aboard. Just in time, too, for the segment of extradimensional space the Citadel resided in gives out soon after and the entire ziggurat collapse in on itself.

With what survives you can find, Nidrom turns the ship around and accelerates towards the ever-shrinking exit to the Apiary. The effects of the out-gassing are sufficiently severe that you take shelter below-deck and watch through portholes the remnants of buildings and bodies being tossed around. Suddenly, out in the distance, something eerily familiar becomes visible: The armored spire drone from earlier, its blood still dulling its other gleaming full-plate! Kingu, not one to let his trophy get away again, ties a rope to his longspear to improvise a harpoon: Then, proving he’s absolutely batshit insane, goes up on deck. Braving shrapnel and an ever-thinning atmosphere in the name of awesome, he sights his mark and ties the other end of his harpoon’s rope to a bolted down object on the deck. Then proceeds to HURL himself towards the bee’s corpse! Using the power of hotblood and a little arcane magic, he manages to fight his way out to it and firmly secure the harpoon. Then proceeding to drag the thing – and himself – back to the airship, using the power of his hotblooded anger. All the while getting towed behind the Ydnamron as it tumbled and rolled through the closing mouth to the Apiary!

Adrenaline pumping, stomachs churning, certain death at hand…and then nothing. The horrible buffeting of wind disappears. The terrible grinding of shrapnel cutting into the hull and the equally terrible splintering of internal support beams gone. A kind of idle peace: Popping the hatches, you find yourself floating in spess, in all of its majesty and horror. Behind you the once panoramic doorway to spess from the Apiary violently shuts and a large segment of the Siberys shard into which the Ark has been built glows white-rod with radiance, as a vast amount of magical energy is set loose by the sealing of the Apiary. And then you see the King of the Talenta Plains, pulling himself aboard the Ydnamron astride his trophy giant spess bee.

She Likes the Sight of Humans On Their Knees
As your exuberance about survival fades, you are forced to undertake the rather necessary job of inspecting the ship and conducting damage control. While the outside of the ship bears a passing resemblance to those in Khorvaire, its interior is like nothing you’ve ever seen: It is everything from the inside of the Ark writ large, with arcane holographic interfaces for seemingly every function, from simply opening doors to the most impressive navigational table you have ever seen. Even the tceffessam seem somewhat overawed by it all.

“Welcome, tceffessam. I have been waiting for you for weeks: I had feared that the worst had come.”

You whip your heads around in the direction that female voice originated from, only to discover a pale blue floating humanoid head. You can’t help but wonder aloud just what it is.

“I am Keeper Ediaranth: Once, long ago, it was my task tend to the Apiary of Harmonious Order. But that was sufficiently long ago that I have lost count myself. As my mortal body withered, I uploaded my mind into the Ydnamron: To watch, and wait, for the dreaded day that this vessel would be needed.”

It’s hard to tell what’s more impressive: That the ship is, for lack of a better work, talking to you or that it claims to be as old as the Ark itself. She – it’s fitting that the ship has the mind of a female, isn’t it? – takes it all surprisingly well, even congratulating you as Nonnagron did for simply making it to the Ark, let alone stabbing Queen Crazypants in the face.

“What you have just witnessed was one of the final safeguards the Creators built into the Ark. The hive-mind of the Apiary of the Harmonious Order was shaped by its queen, and done so through a complex system of arcane amplifiers within her throne room, and it was bound to providing the focus necessary to maintain the magics that carved out the Apiary and which bound Bolothamogg. The amplifiers were constructed in such way that were she ever killed within that throne room, they would self-destruct, on the assumption that if the Queen of the Harmonious Order had been slain, it had been at the behest of the Defiler, and with its shattering, the collapse of the Apiary to ensure the deaths of all the Defiler’s thralls. Using the wreckage of the Apiary as a feedstock, an automated protocol would be engaged to patch any and all primary containment breaches.”

You cannot help but look askance at being told that killing the head honcho of the Elder Evil’s prison guards tore down the final barrier necessary to free it. Or, for that matter, that such a contingency had been planned for in the first place.

“While we are fairly off the beaten path of operating protocols, at this juncture I would implore you to activate the Purge. If we have been sufficiently compromised that the Apiary had to be destroyed, then no hope remains of restoring any kind of true shackling of the Defiler. It will only be a matter of time before he eats through the patches to primary containment which have been applied. Initial reports indicate that the Purge trigger is ready for initiation and arcanocapacitors ready with sufficient power to initiate the Purge.”

You can’t help but curl your nose at that option, knowing that an unknown but a rather large population of innocents exist in the outer ring that would be killed by activating the Purge. Ediaranth sighs exasperatedly and despondently.

“This no time for mindless sentimentality. What is most important is tha—inbound teleportation detected on the top-deck. Odd. Shouldn’t even be able to do that within the dimensional oscillatory shield. Assuming it’s still online. Please tell me it’s online.”

You don’t answer her question, partially because you’re not even sure what she’s talking about, and partially because someone’s outside in spess, presumably without a vac-suit. Racing topside, you do indeed find someone on the deck: A striking young and green-skinned humanoid woman with serpentine features and long, dark hair. She is also naked. And possesses large nail holes in her wrist, elbow, shoulder, ankle, and knee joints, as well as the joints where the femur meets the pelvis, with blood oozing onto the deck.

And, oh yes, she’s not choking vacuum. Or having her blood boil off. Either everyone’s been lying to you and spess really isn’t that bad of a place or the Ydnamron is sheathed in some kind of magical air envelope, so that you can be out and about on the top-deck without a vac-suit. You think it’s the latter.

A Chat With Cthulhu’s Jailer
After having firmly secured the King’s prize, had a chat with the sentience older than your civilization that inhabits the ship, and attended to your hitchhiker as best as you can (whose wounds won’t close, despite Gwynne’s most ardent attempts to pump her full of positive energy), you tend to the important task before you: Repairing the internal teleportation system, so that you can evacuate the Cyrans to somewhere safer. A process which, in rather anticlimactic style, takes all of then minutes to get running: It’s more than made up for by seeing Oagen reunited with his little girl and the tearful revelation that they are indeed going home.

Also the look on Dr. Flint’s face when you reveal the adventure you’ve been on: He’s been chatting with Nonnagron’s animated statute since you left, but apparently it didn’t bother mentioning the Sealed Evil in a Can. Indiana Hyena really, really wishes you hadn’t mentioned it either. The process of moving the Cyrans and their surprisingly copious supplies from the Celestium takes several hours, as does it take several more to get them settled into the rather robust quarters which are available within the bowels of the Ydnamron. After its conclusion, Dr. Flint and Oagen tag each other, with the former officially rejoining the party proper.

While the Cyrans are getting settled, you receive a call from an old holographic friend: Mithril Man, who Ediaranth informs you is Forgemaster Delthan, the man who you have heard so much about. It’s a good thing that Oagen’s no longer in the party, or else he’d’ve tried to stab Delthan through the holographic projector, as it was on Delthan’s orders most of the Cyrans were killed. When you broach the subject, Delthan shrugs.

“I did what I must to protect the Ark: Following the detection of what occurred on your ‘Day of Mourning’, I knew Bolothamogg would sense a disturbance and discover those Lower Worlders. I also know that he would break them and use them as tools to further his own escape. Purging them and destroying the umbilicals should have been – and was! – sufficient for the problem at hand until those constructs came through a year-and-a-half later. And you saw what Bolothamogg did to them.”

You ask what his opinion of the situation is: You had never thought you see a construct made of mithril smirk bemusedly at you, but today’s just been one of those days, hasn’t it?

“Do you know why the Ark still exists? Why I did not activate the Purge when the Queen of Harmonious Order proved to be an inept buffoon incapable of doing even the most of basic of tasks assigned to her? When Ranoe’s precious pets escaped their cages and overran the Arborium? When the illithids infested the Creators’ quarters in the Arcanium? Because that was never my decision to make: It was the decision of Nonnagron himself that the Ark’s mission of preservation was more important than its role as a prison. The Purge can only be activated by a Lower Worlder who has been authorized to do such, by having seen Ranoe’s welcome message at one of her precious obelisks.”

The tceffessam look rather confused: They, apparently, were under the impression they could blow it up themselves if push came to shove. Delthan laughs haughtily at their ignorance, and makes no bones of commenting on it. You angrily note that they’re just as sentient as he Delthan is, and that is why you have issues with blowing up the Ark: Because the outer ring is full of innocents, who don’t deserve a terribly death.

This just makes him laugh even harder.

“I had forgotten what it was like to interact with servitor races: It has been so long since they actually came to the Celestial Foundry for the purposes of chatting rather than attempting to breach the bulwarks. Were it up to me, the Ark would be remembered as nothing more than an odd celestial phenomenon tens of millennia ago. The Purge is the smartest, safest, and most logical course of action for the safety of all being on Eberron.”

He pauses and purses his lips. It seems talking has gotten him thinking about something profound. He sighs wearily.

“For too long have I and my kin been forced to subsist on all but the narrowest of advantages. But one slip-up and we, the final bastion of the Creators, would fall. We have had no margin-of-error or room for seemingly wasteful compassion. But however dim the memory has become, I do remember what it was to be a man. To hope against hope and search for a way out even when logic commends you accept your fate.

“There is nothing I can do to save the Ark. The patch to primary containment will hold for a short period of time: A few decades, maybe half-a-century if we are lucky. When Bolothamogg cracks it, there will be no army ready to face him and the monsters he will spawn to accelerate his escape. He will dominate all sentience aboard the Ark beyond the Foundry, throw them against us, and we shall be overrun. And with that done, he need just deactivate the oscillatory engine and teleport back to Eberron.”

“If, to save a few million souls, you are willing to risk the life, freedom, and even very existence of independent thought on Eberron, then all hope is not lost: The Ark, despite 40,000 years of trouble, can still be repaired. But it will an effort that is herculean even by the standards of the Creators: Its scale is something that, I suspect, you cannot begin to comprehend.”

Checklist of What Must Be Gathered and Done to Fix the ArkManpower
Under the original division of labor which was installed by the titans, the Celestial Forge was tasked with propagating the magics that kept the Ark intact and operational while the Apiary was tasked with the physical upkeep of the Ark and preservation of good order in the areas which the titans had once occupied. Soon after the final titan took its leave of the Ark, however, the system began to break down due to a falling out between the Forgemaster of the Celestial Foundry and the Queens of the Harmonious Order: This falling out, and subsequent compromising of the basic division of labor, led to ever-greater inefficiencies as the Apiary struggled to maintain the exotic arcana which enabled it to exist while the Celestial Foundry struggled to maintain some semblance of order in the outer ring. With the Apiary now gone entirely and the Celestial Foundry’s scarce resources stretched to the breaking point merely to hold onto what it already does, there is no source of manpower available to begin actual repairs of the Ark. You will need to recruit and mobilize three broad classes of individuals in order to restore the Ark:
1) Low-skilled laborers. The task of restoring the Ark will be daunting: It will require the mobilization of a veritable army of thousands of laborers in order to do in any kind of timely manner. Thousands of laborers who will necessitate hundreds of support personnel, to guarantee that they are fed, housed, and properly equipped for the job at hand. And all of this will have to be done in a place 22,000 miles from the planet’s surface.

2) Highly skilled laborers. The Ark is, without question, the most complex eldritch machine ever encountered by the peoples of Khorvaire. The system crafted to do something as simple as maintain a consistent and pleasant temperature throughout a given section of the station is as complex as a creation forge: The mind reels simply trying to imagine the kinds of artifice required to maintain a stable orbit, operate the dimensional oscillation engine, or keep Bolothamogg imprisoned. In addition to a veritable army of worker bees, you will need a legion of arcanely inclined foremen to supervise the teeming masses of laborers, artificers and magewrights to operate arcanely powered heavy equipment, and men willing to develop entire new fields of endeavor, such as mastering spesswalking and arcane operations in the Ring of Siberys. You will also need skilled administrators and bureaucrats to keep a project of this size and scale moving forward.

3) Academics and bureaucrats. It is not simply enough to put an army of laborers at the behest of the Forgemaster: The cultural and technical gaps are too great for such an arrangement to work. You will need to mobilize a sizable intellectual contingent, to process the demands made by the Forgemaster, facilitate the requisite knowledge transfer to make it happen, and to transmit all necessary lessons learned by to Khorvaire. A task the magnitude of the Ark’s restoration will require nothing less than creating several new academic disciplines and pushing exponentially beyond the limits of what was thought possible with current arcana in a half-dozen more: You will need to ensure that you have the brain trust ready to not only rise to the challenge, but do it with aplomb and make sure that those expanded horizons are put to use.

4) Garrison forces. As the party discovered, the Apiary was awash in heavy weaponry and formidable military force. Much of it was devoted to containing Bolothamogg and the horrible creatures that it crafted and animated from Siberys shards and then sent marching against the city. Such a garrison would, in due time, need to be reconstituted to keep a weather eye on the Elder Evil Sealed in a Can. You will also need to recruit and develop a sizable military apparatus if you are to ever hope to retake the Arcanium and evict its mindflayer overlords, or bring order to the death jungles of the Arborium.

Raw Materials
Forty-thousand years ago, the Ark was built in situ using predominantly Conjuration(creation) magics, with raw Siberys shards from the Ring being transmuted directly into arcane energy and then used to power true creation and greater fabricate spells on a truly colossal scale. While the needs of the moment are not nearly as great, the resource stockpiles of the Ark are grossly inadequate to handle the backlog of repairs and deferred basic maintenance which currently exists. Large infusions of four categories of resources are required to restore the Ark:
1) Quality stone and iron. Much of the Ark’s is constructed of alchemically treated and arcanely reinforced stone or steel, which will be required in voluminous quantities to repair the damage done to the Promenade and the outer ring by millennia of bare minimal maintenance and more recent events. Delthan furnishes you with a mineralogical survey of several locations where quarrying stone of sufficient strength can be obtained, as well as the specifications to which steel must be prepared to.

2) Precious industrial metals. The Ark’s critical systems, related to the upkeep of what’s left of Bolothamogg’s prison, upkeep of the Ark’s libraries of the Giants’ knowledge, and maintenance of proper orbit, have been overdue for overhauls. The situation has degenerated to the point that nothing less than full rebuilds of most of those systems will be required, and necessary to do that will be adamantium, mithril, and a basket of other planar minerals you have never heard of before. Delthan provides you with a mineralogical survey of several locations where these metals can be found in the quantities required.

3) Organic materials. For all of its wondrous and gleaming artifice, the Ark is still in no small part reliant upon plants for day-to-day operations: The organic material they produce is used in myriad applications across the Ark, ranging from emergency patching materials to maintain the structural integrity of the outer ring to being the basis for the fibrous arcane cabling that transfers energy throughout the Ark and, given the extent of the accumulated damage to the Ark, massive quantities of such will be needed. A small botanical encyclopedia is supplied to you of useful plants and, more broadly, useful traits known to be possessed by plants.

4) Portable magic. Many of the Ark’s systems were built to utilize combined-cycle arcane power sources, drawing some of their power from absorbing the ambience of the Ark’s central Siberys shard while, concurrently, drawing power from the direct transmutation of shard reservoirs into magic. The Celestial Foundry’s shard reservoirs have all but depleted themselves: Alternative sources and mechanisms for solid magical fuel will be required to keep the systems which rely on portable magic online.

Arcana
Magic is the lifeblood of the Ark: It is what keeps the station where it is and keeps its prisoner bound, ever so tenuously.
1) Little magic. Around every corner of the Ark lays some kind of magical effect: From its usage of holographic interfaces to its omnitool security protocols, the Ark is replete the arcane. Much of its functionality has worn thin, however, due to failures by both the Celestial Foundry and Apiary to ensure basic upkeep was done on the infrastructure that supports it. This is the sort of work, keeping ambient magical effects operative and in the best possible condition under their usage circumstances, that is the bread-and-butter of major urban areas in Khorvaire: A corps of artificers and magewrights adept at such preservation of ambient magical effects will be required to return the Ark to its former glory.

2) Big magic. As the millennia have worn on, the Ark has faced an ever greater magical energy crunch: Because of the falling out between the Apiary and the Celestial Foundry has much of the power collection apparatus to ossify and breakdown due to lack of maintenance. The available power resources for the Ark have dwindled to the point that there is only enough to maintain its most essential systems for maintaining orbit and the most critical of the station’s defensive protocols: Worse still, the immense periods of exposure to the hostile medium of spess have corroded and warped most of the radiance collectors that power the Ark, meaning simple repair is no longer an option and that replacement is necessary, and there simply no way to replace the ruined collectors needed in a timely manner given the slew of other, more pressing repairs that need to be made. What is required is a power source capable of producing the combined output of the lost radiance collectors: Delthan thinks he could design such a thing, but would need to find someone with a large enough and sophisticated enough magical base to build it. He scoffs at anyone in Khorvaire being able to do it: He requires something with an output of four-hundred megavances – with a vance equaling one-sixth of a spell-level per second of magical output – and the largest such output humanity has ever achieved was approximately ninety kilovances, out of the oscillatory engine which inadvertently triggered the Mourning. You’re going to have to enlist the help of someone with far, far more power. While Delthan knows nothing of Eberron’s evolution for the past 40,000 years, he can think of at least one player who could do what he requires: Argonnessen.

Ding-ding-ding goes the trolley! And the party, too.

Party gains a level and is now L7. Huzzah! Write-up of the immediate aftermath of your killing the load-bearing boss will follow, as will the actual XP dump. Below is the accumulated loot you have acquired between this adventure and that which is still back in Sharn.

Appraiser’s Note: Because there is no established market for abeil art, Mara’s bracketed value estimations are heavily weighted towards the value of their materials rather than their market value.

Mundanes Items and Junk
Fur-lined bomber jacket with unit patches of the 32nd “Fightin’ Shardhorns” Air Mobility Squadron [x2] [1x claimed by Burzam]
Hardened chitin helmet with inert holographic interface [x2]
Borken and inoperative arcane matrix
Damaged compact gunblade components [x3] [all claimed by Burzam for research and spares]
Damaged tactical gunblade components [x1] [claimed by Burzam for research and spares]
Damaged shardcaster components [x2] [claimed by Burzam for research and spares]
Damaged snipehammer components [x1] [claimed by Burzam for research and spares]
Broken suit of ornate, platinum-filigreed mithril full-plate, sized for a Large quadraped
Full-length mirror with a viewing surface composed of elemental water
Huge-sized tapestry of abeils and uplifted races guarding shackled demons, with the texture and appearance of a mosaic fresco
Wall scroll featuring a permanent silent image of seemingly random colors that reveal a watercolored portrait of a creature like Blasto when looked at from the right angle
Black-and-red chess-style game board that, when opened, produces round holographic game pieces that can be interacted with
Solid platinum, 15’ tall Bling Throne of Awesomeness under shrink item effect [claimed by Kingu]
A transparent cage, which emanates a strong Transmutation aura, containing a perfectly ordinary hamster [claimed by Gwynne]
Huge-sized full-plate with Siberys shard gilting fitted for a spire drone [claimed by Kingu]
Bottle of Aerklanholde whiskey, 873 A.K. vintage
Journal of Kyra Imardi, detailing life aboard the Ark and splattered with bloody
Journal of Lord of Blades’ expedition, laden with log entries, arcane discourses, and insane ramblings A Brief Primer on Cenyor’xen Arcana, an eight volume set of tomes each a thousand pages long and written in Abeil [Burzam wants personal copy]Twenty-Seven Salutes: Social Mores and You, a book on social etiquette in the Arcanium, written in DaelkyrHomes Away from Home: Dealing with Uplifting Sickness, a book about coping with becoming a tceffessam and written in Abeil; dog-eared is a page urging readers not to panic and encouraging them to try “towel therapy”

Odds and Ends
Corpse of Huge silver dragon, stored under gentle repose in the Terminus District of SharnKwah’nobe, a folding boat powered by a bound elemental [claimed by Burzam on behalf of the party]

In which the party is buried under ONE MILLION WORDS of expositionary transition.

You sit back and take in the scenery that whizzes past as your commandeered prison transport descends into the bowels of the bejeweled crystalline city of the abeils. Your heart jumps as you fly past multiple abeil-manned soarcraft, but they seem to pay you no mind. Thankfully. After what seems a small eternity, you finally feel your craft set down: Disembarking, you find yourself in the blasted and blown-out husk a crystalline building. Pehsemmef informs you that this was, once upon a time, a barracks of the tceffessam. Until two-and-a-half weeks ago, at any rate, when the abeils in whose service they had been descended upon them, intent on killing them to the last. The debris-strewn floors of the barracks bear witness to that, with dried and faded blood stains abounding and the occasional body too deeply buried to have been easily recovered by the abeil invaders.

You cannot help but wonder what would have driven the abeils to do that. Or, for that matter, just what the tceffessam even are. Or where they came from, as the five you have met all possess radically different anatomies and methods of communication. Upon inquiring with the prisoners you liberated, you learn that the tceffessam are “uplifted” denizens of the Arcanium and Arborium: Creatures raised out of the primordial struggle of life-and-death or freed from the shackles of servitude to the illithids by the abeils, then shown the wider world beyond what they had known. (“Enkindling within them the desire to keep the Defiler imprisoned,” to borrow Blasto’s phraseology.) Harozilat and Surrag were themselves natives of the Arborium, while Blasto and Nidrom were uplifted from the Arcanium. Pehsemmef became stand-offish when the subject of her own origins was broached, with the only information she would provide being that, “it was complicated.”

Taking stock of the situation and what your options are proceeding forward, you find the tceffessam are deadlocked and have spent a not-insubstantial amount of time arguing over this point. 18 days ago - you cannot help but idly wonder how, precisely, a place decoupled from the rising and setting of the Sun can have days – a cascading failure occurred in the Containment Fields northeast of the city, with much of the secondary containment systems being rendered inert. “Secondary containment”, a term you’ve often heard lobbed at you with little context, refers to the prevention of Bolothamogg from using the ambient magics of the Siberys shard which houses him, while “primary containment” refers to the integrity of the physical prison in which it is held. Much of the secondary containment systems were found in the northeastern zone of the cavern in which the Apiary exists, in the obviously named Containment Fields. No one was sure what caused the failure, though it was preceded by a series of strange commands emanating from maintenance areas in the Promenade. With many of the defenses against the Defiler’s usage of the Siberys shard’s inherent magics disabled, it was at most a few hours before it began enslaving the minds of its keepers: With willing thralls at its disposal to further weaken secondary containment, the width and depth of its control expanded so that within a mere day it had succeeded in taking control of the minds of some three-quarters of the Apiary’s denizens. It then set the military machine intended to contain it upon those who had resisted or evaded its control, including the vast bulk of the tceffessam. With control of the Apiary firmly in hand, it then ordered its minions to begin working on breaching primary containment, so that it could once and for all truly escape. Ominously, none of the liberated tceffessam know how far along the Defiler’s thralls are in affecting such, though the resources afforded by a city such as the Apiary should be sufficient to make it happen at a rather frightening pace.

Exterminating the masses of those who had resisted the Defiler’s control, however, was no easy task: Especially for the tceffessam, who were uplifted precisely because of the impressiveness of their talents and implicitly to give the keepers of the Apiary an independent force capable of operating against the abeil masses should something like this happen. Many, however, were captured in the initial crackdown: The less useful were summarily killed, while the others were sent to freshly created re-educated camps where they could be “indoctrinated” into Bolothamogg’s thralldom and turned against their former comrades in arms. Despite the weight of the abeil’s military and the psychological warfare waged upon them by being pursued by their former comrades, some of the tceffessam succeeded in evading capture and regrouping. Once regrouped, however, they had been unable to decide upon a course of action, ultimately dividing their forces in the hopes that one of the factions might find success. The courses of action pursued were:

1) A single tceffessam decided it would be most efficient to simply shoot and/or stab Queen Sitris’Aniram, the leader of the abeils, in the face. That man’s name was Wrex. It was his intent to, by himself, storm the Palace of Harmonious Order and then proceed to kill everything in his path until he made his way to the Queen’s throne room. And then, once there, proceed to undertake any number of excruciatingly painful endeavors that would have ended her life. A simple, but effective, way of breaking the hierarchy of the Apiary’s abeils: As the elf-bees were still more elf than bee, the decapitation of their political and social leadership would have thrown them into utter chaos. Judging from the resistance you encountered in freeing the tceffessam, however, you’re fairly sure that Wrex has not yet succeeded in fulfilling his mission. Surrag and Nidrom favor finishing what they presume Wrex has started, for just beyond the throne room lays the Ydnamron and with it the ability to end the threat posed by Bolothamogg once and for all.

The Ydnamron, as Nidrom points out to you, was one of the many redundant fail-safes built into the Ark. It is a soarship capable of operating within spess, intended to function as an lifeboat in the event that the Apiary was ever compromised. (It was never suspected that the entirety of abeil society might well end up contaminated.) The Ydnamron provides all the tools required to operate as a floating command post, with built-in access to the Ark’s internal transporter network and the ability to override all lockouts inhibiting the use of the transporter network and portal connecting the Ark to Eberron. Including those installed by Forgemaster Delthan. Were the Ydanamron to fall into the hands of Queen Sitris’Aniram, it would allow the abeils free movement throughout the Ark and could easily allow them to move, en masse, back to Eberron if a portal had been built planetside. While access to the Ydnamron is restricted and protected against infiltration by the contaminated, with sufficient resources, any lock can be picked or any door blown off its hinges: This particular fear is what animated Nidrom’s concerns about preventing the Queen from getting access to the Ydnamron.

Surrag, on the other hand, simply informs you that the Ydnamron also possesses a terminal with which the Purge of the Ark can be initiated. In light of the circumstances, it seems that it’d be most prudent to simply engage the ultimate kill-mode and then take the Ydnamron back to Eberron.

2) Two tceffessam, Aramas and Arail, led the remaining asari – numbering several dozen – to the northeast, intent on storming the Citadel of the Everflowing Aerotheria. (The asari, apparently, are a race that has had entire communities from the Arcanium uplifted. Those of you who speak Elven bite your tongues, as you wonder whether there is any connection between the word asari and the modern near-cognate derogative that roughly translates to “slattern.”) It was their intention to destroy the eldritch machine which provided breathable air to both the Apiary and Promenade, as well as the eldritch machine which maintained the magical barrier that prevented the atmosphere of the Apiary from venting out into spess. Activating the Citadel’s self-destruct protocols would accomplish both: Upon further inquiring, you also discover that blowing such up would eventually depressurize the Promenade, as it was the Citadel which made good the losses of atmosphere to simple seepage from the Promenade. As the tceffessam and abeils are not in vacsuits, it’s a fair bet that Aramas and Arail have not succeeded in their mission. Harozilat and Blasto both favor deploying what strength you have towards affecting such a plan, as it would “only” kill anything residing in the Apiary or Promenade that could not function in vacuum. Such a plan also, conveniently enough, should clear out the Promenade of any woeforged, as it seems highly unlikely that their necromantically animated organic bits can handle vacuum any better than your still-living parts.

3) The remaining mass of the tceffessam had set out for the maintenance corridors, in the hope of slipping out of the Apiary, into the Promenade, and then to the Celestial Foundry where they could re-establish contact with the Forgemaster’s forces and then reinitialize secondary containment and remotely purge what had to be from the Apiary. Luck ran against them, as they were overrun as they approached the closest maintenance access corridor: The one you all, incidentally, came through. Those who did not perish were shackled and made ready for transport. Prior to such occurring, however, the party intervened and freed them. Aren’t they lucky?

The remaining tceffessam are deadlocked: While two favor Option #1 and two favor Option #2, Pehsemmef remains torn and unable to condone the genocide of all those in the Arcanium and Arborium, while being equally doubtful that simply blowing the atmosphere in the Apiary will contain all the damage that has been done. They turn to you all to decide how to proceed: What say, oh venerable party?

Loot, Exploration, and Party StatusLoot
While in flight, you began poking around the interior of the soarship you “borrowed”. You discover a rather robust weapons locker, containing two shardcasters(each with 14 Siberys “spikes”, containing 3d4 worth of crystal damage), two snipehammers, three tactical gunblades, three compact gunblades, and six gundaggers. Additionally, you recovered a tactical gunblade, four compact gunblades, one shardcaster(w/14 Siberys spikes), and two gundaggers from the abeil jailers and soarship crew you killed. Mara’s keenly honed appraising eye puts all of them at masterwork quality, though she cannot be certain given that it’s radically different from anything she’s ever seen before. Examining the armory in the barracks you land at turns up no additional usable weaponry: It is barren of working abeil weaponry, though there are various broken iterations of such that were damaged during the storming of the barracks that may be looted.

No other immediately useful adventuring gear can be found in the ruins or from the enemies you have killed and looted.

Exploration
You are laying over in the ruins of advanced civilization’s barracks: These are circumstances ripe for exploration and looting. While the tceffessam argue with themselves, and you with them, you may do such. Characters may take as many notes as they so desire; they may, as well, actively search for things. What, exactly, they are searching for can be relayed to the DM in the coming down-week: You have, by the DM’s count, four bags of holding(I) at your disposal: Such will be assumed to be filled with stuff from the armory at the start of next session, the precise contents hashed out during the coming down-week.

Party Status
Due to the length of your layover, your spell and power points are refreshed and are now at full, and whatever leftover ability damage is out-standing is also healed. Ambient magical effects at their finest, folks.

You discover, while poking around your omnitool, that you have been reclassified as a tceffessam and that, apparently, you have been given new user privileges as a result. The arcane spell pool provided by the omnitool is now an individual, rather than party-wide, pool. Your luck bonus to to hit, damage, saves and Armor Class is increased to +2.

When not arguing over what path to take, the tceffessam set about making sure that the soarship is ready for whatever is in the not-so-distant future. Digging through the rubble, they dig out several battered but still functional heavy armaments not terribly dissimilar to and rather more advanced than the eldritch cannon that Burzam made use of when he rode to the party’s rescue, scavenging four from the barracks’ rubble and mounting them in fixed positions on the side and rear doors of the soarship. Seeing the soarship with its large, sliding side doors opened reminds you of when all of this started and the Citadel soarskiff that saved you from Scimitar: Whether it’s a testament to the advanced nature of Galifarian civilization or the amazing coincidences that’re produced by convergent technical evolution is better left unsaid. You also discover that the soarship itself has some integral weaponry that is rather impressive: Impressive enough, as you discover, that the backseater is expected to use them.

The question of who, if anyone, shall ride shotgun to Nidrom when you take your leave of the barracks lays before you. The upcoming gaming segments will rely heavily on branching party choices: You will be given two sets of tasks, with your party choosing to do one and having the tceffessam do the other. Therefore, it would probably be prudent to keep the tceffessam party at its current size of four and seat one of your own NPCs, Mara or Oagen, running the weapons and navigation of the soarship. At the same time, you may desire to seat a PC there, but in the event of stuff happening in-flight in the cargo compartment, said PC will not be able to take part in it. Or you may desire to simply leave the seat empty: Such is entirely up to you.

Because it wasn't transperant enough what franchise I was cribbing from.

“Authorized security measures activated.”

With those words, the giant hologram’s grainy image dissolves: At the same time, your forearms glow brightly, as ethereal orange gauntlet-bracers conjure themselves into existence! Somewhat taken aback by the “gift” granted to you by the arcane hologram, you tepidly poke your new not-quite-there armor which, to your astonishment, reacts to your poke and conjures out of the ether a floating window filled with writing that you can readily identify as Giant, even if it appears incomprehensible: A few seconds later, the translation magic kicks in, and you can make it out just fine, with the screen asking for your query. Mara, clearly frustrated, mutters about who she has to inquire with to get a consistent translation regime from the various interfaces of the Ark: Much to your surprise, an answer instantaneously appears within the window, informing you to direct all translation and interfacing problems to some known as Keeper Ediaranth in the Apiary, wherever that is.

Sufficiently impressed by the fact that you’re wearing a holographic bracer-gauntlet that can understand and respond to your requests despite not actually being there, you gingerly inquire just what the heck the thing even is. It identifies itself as an “omnitool”, a device intended to facilitate easier access to the Ark’s various subsystems, in-particular the Level I security measures which you have been given access to.

Level I Security Measures:
1) Arcane spellcasting unlocked. All party members may cast any spell of 3rd-level or lower off of the wizard/sorcerer or bard spell-list as if they were a wizard, sorcerer, or bard with a Caster Level equal to their Hit Dice. You may use your Intelligence or Charisma, whichever is better, to set any and all save DCs. The party shares an encounter-based pool of spell-levels with which to cast spells at a 1:1 basis. (I.E. a 1st-level spell consumes one spell-level, a 2nd-level spell consumes two, and so on.) The pool begins each encounter with 15 spell-levels within it. Arcane Spell Failure percentages from armor apply to spells cast in this manner, but spending an additional spell-level to cast a spell negates a 10% ASF chance. Multiple spell-levels can be expended in this way to overcome greater ASF chances.

2) Offensive and defensive precognition unlocked. All party members gain a +1 luck bonus to hit, damage, saves and Armor Class.

Palace of the Indomitable Pyroclasm
—Entering a Building Whose Motif Revolves Around Fire: 50xp
—Disbelieving the Physics Required for Said Motif to Work: 50xp
—Meeting an Efreeti and Taking It In Stride: 25xp
—Witnessing Not-Draonic Squabbling Between Two Obviously Not-Dragons: 75xp
—Learning That Roach Had Been a Busy Boy: 75xp
—Agreeing To Rescue Roach and His Sidekick: 25xp, +2 Good Points

In addition to the above loot, you also discover a pair of +1 Huge adamantine greathammers which had been wielded by the destroyed warforged titans, as well as Blackfist, the revived but immobile warforged charger. You cannot move, let alone loot, those: Though it may, with a bit of effort, be possible to hide them to prevent their being recovered until you can figure out how to get them out of the Lower Dura ward.

You guys are now L5! And have decisions to make.

With the Austasia impersonator gone and Varnak’s support in guaranteeing that it seems that “Princess Austasia” takes her leave of the ir’Clarn estate, you have little reason to stay in Wroat. Though with the hospitality offered by Luken, it’s hard to find a reason to leave between the not-harem harem which surrounds you, vivacious tyrannosaur, and life of luxury afforded by just hanging out. There are pressing things to attend to, though, which you do in due course between Lirgiv’s metaphysical ramblings and Luken’s linguistic boondoggles over two-and-a-half weeks.

First and foremost is the matter of the prisoners who did not escape during the breakout of “Austasia”, Knuckles and Ayrun. While both had proven close-mouthed for the most part while their boss was in captivity, having been left to rot loosens their tongues. They confirm that “Austasia” was intend an impostor, a changeling by the name of Rooikat: Neither, however, seems to have any idea of why she was hired, pleading that they were merely Rooikat’s traditional hired muscle and she never shared such things with them. Ayrun believed Rooikat had been hired by a previous employer, due to the familiarity – and contempt – she expressed for him or her. Hoping that Rooikat had taken flight without cleaning up her paper trail, Varnak and the party tear up the room she had been using hoping to find something useful: Well-hidden and guarded by anti-divination wards, a bag of holding was found which contained a logbook detailing names, dates, and varieties of employment Rooikat and her gang had been employed in. Itself a rather damning thing, under the dates at which Rooikat was at the ir’Clarn estate, it lists her employer as Guix ir’Vannan. Mara’s jaw slackens at seeing that: Guix ir’Vannan is Aundair’s ambassador to Breland.

The question still remains what to do with Ayrun and Knuckles: With the revelation they were in the employ of Aundair’s ambassador, you’re still looking at a potential international incident if this is not handled carefully. Aurim claims to be owed a favor by the local House Deneith enclave, which can be called in to quietly and securely put the two of them on a slow boat to Stormreach or Regalport. Varnak’s apt to simply let that be the end of it, unless the party’s got a better idea.

The second matter of import is preparing to leave Wroat itself. You have a large stockpile of gear to process, as well as a new party member who is essentially naked. Mercifully, Mara is able to extract a fair amount of useful kit from the loot pile while still leaving more than enough to make everyone (even more?) filthy stinking rich. Moving the kinds and volumes of goods being discussed while simultaneously keeping a low profile takes time, though Varnak seems to “know just the dwarf” who can get it done. The offer you receive is 36,000gp for the entire lot: With Mara eschewing any interest due to her already taking her fair share, that works out to 9,000gp per head. With an offer on the table for your goods, you also resolve the status of your lightning rail car: Unfortunately, circumstance has demanded that the car be pressed back into line-service, though you do receive a voucher for three days of private car service in the future and Gwynne receives her 3,000gp back, along with a note from Valara apologizing for the inconvenience, but noting the offer for dinner at the Celestial Vista is still good for the enxt time they’re in Sharn. The final aspect of preparedness comes from fashioning a gondola with which to bear the party upon the back of their newfound dragonhawk: As fashioning such a thing for a dragonhawk would probably attract undue attention, an on-site assembly is necessitated. Surprisingly, Ligriv is surprisingly knowledgeable both about the carrying capacity of dragonhawks and the necessary aerodynamics of the project, making him an ideal designer for the device. (Seeing a tyrannosaur sketch blueprints with a paintbrush in its mouth is one of the things you will never, ever be able to forget.) Constructing it falls to the estate’s hired help, though once finished, it seems an ideal match for what was needed: It took a while to convince Efram of that, but Mara proved to be very persuasive.

Thirdly, there is the out-standing offer by Alvos Brillik to participate in his great expedition into the Mournland. You argue amongst yourselves, for and against, for several days and are unable to come to a consensus: While the rewards are beyond your wildest dreams, so are the potential dangers. You inform the General of this: He gets a good laugh at it, but says he understands. He informs you that his intended departure date from Gatherhold is 8 Dravago, which is five weeks from today, and that if you make it, bunk space aboard the Vermitharan can be found for you. As he takes his leave of Wroat, he also informs you that if you have any more questions, direct them to Beveril ir’Kaian, Prince Oargev’s ambassador to the court of King Boranel. Strangely, the day after Brillik took his leave of Wroat, you received a summons to the home of Beveril, asking you visit at your earliest possible convenience. Should you choose to join the Brillik expedition, there are four primary ways to reach Gatherhold from Wroat:
1) Take the lightning rail northeast to Thaliost, Thrane, take a ferry across Scion’s Sound or ford the rubble of the White Arch Bridge to Rekkenmark, Karrnath, then take the lightning rail south from Rekkenmark through Korth, Karrlakton, and Vendra to Gatherhold.
2) Take the lightning rail northeast to Flamekeep, Thrane, board a ship traveling across Scion’s Sound to Korth, Karrnath, then take the lightning rail through Karrlakton and Vendra to Gatherhold.
3) Take the lightning rail northeast to Hatheril, then fly or walk to the southern shore of Lake Brey, where a boat is then taken east along the Brey River, north and east across Scion’s Sound, then south down the Cyre River into Lake Cyre and then to Gatherhold.
4) Take the lightning rail southwest to Sharn, where a boat is then taken south and east to Pylas Maradel, Valenar, then walking, flying, or taking the lightning rail north-by-northeast through Taer Valaestas, Keth, Shivairn, and Mishann to Gatherhold.

If the loot manifest is approved, shopping and meeting with Beveril, if you are so inclined, can be done off-screen. The game will pick up on game-date 3 Eyre, 998 A.K.

A man with boundless intellect has a boundless ambition and wants to send you into a land full of a boundless number of things that want to kill you.

Alvos Brillik smiles, knowingly, as he folds his arms and starts his sales pitch.

“It has become something of a cliché to say that Cyre’s destruction is a fait accompli. Were that it were true! I could have spent the past four years somewhere nice and sunny, finally devoting myself to my life’s one true love. But no, Cyre is not lost. Diminished, indubitably, but not dead. And it is my ambition to restore her.”

“Grandiose, I know, but a testament to Cyre’s ability to endure is the persistence of the ‘Cyran Question’ on the international stage: What are the nations of Khorvaire to do with we Cyrans, in light of what happened on the Day of Mourning? Aurala made clear what she thinks – that there is no more Cyre – and she carried the day in the Thronehold Accords. But not all are so…closed-minded or unsympathetic. I’ve spent the last four years courting, badgering, cajoling, and guilting those who disagree with Aurala into doing something about it. And my efforts are about to bear fruit.”

“Karrnath and Breland have proven…amenable to modifications to the post-war order, to facilitate the creation of a new Kingdom of Cyre out of the remnants of what once was that great nation: In short, the consolidation of the Talenta Plains, Valenar, and New Galifar into a single polity, one which also exercises nominal sovereign control of the Mournland. The sell, admittedly, was rather easier than you might think. The Talenta Plains have proven ungovernable, with the tribes, settlers, and my armies for that matter paying little heed to the Ghallandra government in Gatherhold; the elves of Valenar have proven rather uninterested in governing and would rather fight each other; and New Galifar is constantly inveighing for assistance from the Five Nations to deal with whatever the crisis of the week is in Q’barra. Making them all a problem of someone other than the guarantors of the Thronehold Accords was a rather convincing argument.”

“To do all of that, I need a king for what would be the resurrected Cyre. Fortunately, fate opted to preserve one member of Dannel’s line: Her youngest son, Oargev, who was the ambassador to Breland when the Day of Mourning occurred and who has, subsequently, become the leader of the enclave at New Cyre. (Ironic that the man who would be king of a new Cyre is the mayor of a burg called New Cyre, isn’t it?) No, what I require and do not have to make a king of him is a crown. And that is where our interests coincide, for I am organizing an expedition to the Mournland to recover the Cyran crown jewels.”

“The mobile fortress Vermitharas was the last of those great structures to be constructed during the Last War, having been laid down in 993 and been in the final stages of assembly at the elemental works in Mishann when the Mourning happened. For the past four years, the Ghallandra government and I have been scrimping and saving to finish her construction: A task which we have, at long last, completed. I will be taking the Vermitharas, with a full crew complement, to Vermishard Palace, in the very heart of Metrol. We are going to salvage the House Kundarak-built vaults beneath the palace and the treasures they contain, including the crown jewels. And I am in need of brave souls who are willing to brave the horrors of Host only knows what has taken up residence in Metrol and the depths of Cyre’s former seat of government.”

“I can see that look on your faces: ‘What’s in it for us?’ Well, I promised you way into Fairhaven, didn’t I? Once crowned, custom would demand that King Oargev undertake a state visit to the courts of the other major powers: True, this practice faded during the Last War, but it persisted at least when the powers weren’t at each other’s throats. You could be made members of his diplomatic entourage, which would, in due course, get you access to Fairhaven and a fair amount of freedom of action to pursue your goals once there. Beyond that…well, you would be heroes of the realm, helping revive a nation thought lost to history and providing a home to millions of displaced refugees. If altruism is not sufficient…well, the thanks of the royal government would be consummate to the risks taken: Ennobling and demenses for you all are certainly guaranteed, with thousands upon thousands of acres of the Talenta Plains and northern Valenar available for bequeathing. And who knows what treasures might be found in Metrol? Reasonable rights of salvage will be afforded while in the Mournland. If that is not enough to adduce you…well, I suspect not even Kol Korran himself could convince you to go.”

Congrats, party! You got fat loot. ...and an international incident or three brewing.

Calm soon returns to the outdoor annex to the ir’Clarn estate’s main residency, as Varnak, Luken, Dr. Flint, and the guards free themselves from the sticky tanglefoot residue in which they found themselves trapped. Chaos soon returns, however, as Varnak begins asserting control over the situation and the damage control commences: After all, for many of the denizens of the ir’Clarn palace, they witnessed Princess Austasia being forcibly escorted out the back door and will not be seeing her re-enter. Combined with the sounds of scuffling that were invariably heard, it seems inevitable that folks will assume that someone attacked Austasia and her disappearance indicates a kidnapping.

After caucusing with Varnak, Aurim, and – perhaps counterproductively – Luken, a workable lie was finalized: The dragonhawk succeeded in escaping its restraints again, and the on-rush of a giant bird seeking to devour her had given the poor Austasia a case of the vapors, causing her to faint and demanding the rushing her off to her quarters for sequestration until her consciousness and nerve returned. (Mara, it must be noted, vociferously objected: Though whether it was due to her finding the idea genuinely flawed or just to disliking being portrayed as a fragile waif is debatable.) It was not, of course, a long-term resolution to the problem of what do about their impostor’s posing as Austasia, but at least it bought time to give the matter some thought.

With the immediate crisis averted, the guards and grounds crew of the estate set about moving Knuckles, Ayrun, and Austasia to a more…secure location, where upon they were dutifully searched and their items inventoried. Mara, demonstrating a bit of initiative and skill you didn’t realize she possessed, set about identifying what inventoried equipment, as well as the equipment you recovered from Avina. The next several hours pass in relative peace: Mara being busy identifying, while Varnak busies himself with clearing Austasia’s social calendar and convincing the small army of men who were clamoring for some of her time that it would be impossible to see her today.

Four hours have elapsed since the end of the brawl and it is now mid-afternoon. Mara has succeeded in clearing out the backlog, quite a feat, given the size of the inventory she was asked to tackle, though she lacks the tools to accurately assess the values of the gems found on Knuckles and Ayrun. According to Aurim, which Gwynne corroborates, the knock-out poison used on Austasia should be wearing off soon. A new wrinkle has manifested itself, though, as one of Austasia’s appointments, an elderly firebrand identifying himself as General Alvos Brillik whom Varnak informs you was the man with whom Austasia was meeting when he grabbed her, adamantly refuses to leave and has gone so far as to ask to speak with the party, directly. Varnak seems rather loathe to resort to throwing him out, while Mara seems to almost titter when it’s brought up he’s here and seeking her out. (Well, her other persona, at any rate.)

You have three questions that’re worth mulling over, intrepid explorers:
1) What are you going to do with the impostor Austasia and her goons?
2) What are you going to do about the fact that it’s common knowledge Austasia is in Wroat at the ir’Clarn residence and her going missing will clearly draw attention?
3) What are you going to do about this Alvos Brillik fellow?

You have four hours of downtime with which to play with, if you’d like to do anything in-particular, before the next session begins. Just lemme know, then we’ll figure out what needs to be done to make it happen.

Robbing unconscious wizards, for fun and profit!

The information below is simply to satisfy the need all players have to know what shinies they’ve found. The magical items require identification, though some are fairly obvious. The mundane stuff requires interaction in-character to resolve, though it’s fun stuff, so answers will be forthcoming if you do fiddle with them.

A blog for your campaign

While the wiki is great for organizing your campaign world, it’s not the best way to chronicle your adventures. For that purpose, you need a blog!

The Adventure Log will allow you to chronologically order the happenings of your campaign. It serves as the record of what has passed. After each gaming session, come to the Adventure Log and write up what happened. In time, it will grow into a great story!

Best of all, each Adventure Log post is also a wiki page! You can link back and forth with your wiki, characters, and so forth as you wish.

One final tip: Before you jump in and try to write up the entire history for your campaign, take a deep breath. Rather than spending days writing and getting exhausted, I would suggest writing a quick “Story So Far” with only a summary. Then, get back to gaming! Grow your Adventure Log over time, rather than all at once.